Former model agent Paolo Zampolli attends a United Nations Security Council hearing on Children, Technology and Eduction headed by U.S. First Lady Melania Trump at the UN Headquarters in New York City on March 2, 2026.Anthony Behar/Sipa USA/AP
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Paolo Zampolli epitomizes why so many people hate the Trump administration.
Zampolli serves as Donald Trump’s US special envoy for “Global Partnership” and is mired in controversies over this year’s World Cup, Jeffrey Epstein, and, according to the New York Times, ICE.
He’s a shining example of people alleged to be scammer and abusers have weaseled their way into using Trump’s global platform for their own nefarious purposes. Let’s take a look.
On Wednesday, Zampolli told the Financial Times he made a suggestion to Trump and FIFA President Gianni Infantino that Iran be replaced by Italy at this summer’s World Cup. The soccer tournament will be played in the US, Canada, and Mexico, and both the US and Iran have expressed concerns that it would not be possible for Iran, which is currently at war with Israel and the United States.
“I’m an Italian native and it would be a dream to see the Azzurri at a US-hosted tournament. With four titles, they have the pedigree to justify inclusion,” Zampolli said to the Financial Times (“Azzuri” is a nickname for the Italian national sports team, which has won the competition four times, but has failed to qualify for three successive tournaments). Zampolli is an Italian-American but has no apparent association with Italian soccer or the World Cup.
The Financial Times suggested that Zampolli’s idea was designed to improve US and Italy relations after Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni condemned Trump’s bizarre remarks about Pope Leo XIV over the war in Iran.
You may be wondering: Why is an American envoy attempting to lobby on behalf of Italy instead of the US?
Zampolli reposted the Financial Times‘ Tuesday story on X and, late Wednesday night, posted two screenshots of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reporting his World Cup proposal.
“Firstly, it is not possible, secondly it is not appropriate,” Italy’s sports minister, Andrea Abodi, told LaPresse. “You qualify on the pitch.”
“The attempt to exclude Iran from the World Cup only reveals the moral bankruptcy of the United States, which is afraid even of the presence of eleven young Iranians on the field of play,” the Iranian embassy said. A spokesperson for Iran’s government said Wednesday that Iran is prepared to play at the World Cup, according to the Associated Press.
According to the BBC, FIFA is not planning to replace Iran with Italy.
In other words, everyone hates the Trump administration.
Zampolli, a former head of a modeling agency in the ’90s, claims that he introduced Donald and Melania Trump and helped the first lady obtain a work visa in the mid-’90s. He even told the Daily Mail he was prepared to testify before Congress following Melania’s public denial earlier this month of close connections to Jeffrey Epstein, including that it was the convicted sex offender introduced her to Donald Trump. Melania Trump called for a congressional hearing to allow survivors of Epstein’s abuse to testify.
Zampolli has his own ties to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. He and Epstein discussed and later failed in their bid to purchase the agency Elite Model Management in 2004, and according to the Daily Beast, became a partner of Maxwell’s environmental charity and nonprofit organization, the TerraMar Project, that described itself as focused on protecting oceans. Maxwell launched the project in 2012 but the organization was dissolved in December 2019, following Epstein’s arrest in July of that same year.
Last month, the New York Times reported that Zampolli sent a request to David Venturella, an ICE official, to put his ex-girlfriend Amanda Ungaro, who is Brazilian and was arrested on charges of workplace fraud, in ICE detention. Zampolli had been in a custody battle with Ungaro over their son.
The Times obtained communication records demonstrating that Venturella contacted ICE’s Miami office to make sure agents would take Ungaro from a Miami jail where she was being held, an order that Venturella said was important to an individual closely connected to the White House. Ungaro was placed in ICE custody and deported, but, according to the Times, it remains unclear whether Zampolli’s request led to Ungaro’s deportation.
Mr. Zampolli denied asking ICE to detain Ungaro, saying he only asked Venturella about the status of her case.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement to the Times that Ungaro was detained and deported due to an expired visa and her fraud charges. “Any suggestion that she was arrested and removed for political reasons or favors is FALSE.”
Neither the US State Department nor the Kennedy Center immediately responded to a request from Mother Jones for Zampolli’s comment on the Financial Times and New York Times stories. (The Office for Global Partnerships is an office within the US State Department and Zampolli is on the board of trustees of the Kennedy Center, as appointed by President Trump.
Sensing a pattern? If Zampolli does get a role in organizing the World Cup, fans, players, journalists, and other travelers may be subjected to the Trump administration’s brutal immigration policies.
